A generational home, which once housed several laughters and tears, is left for deterioration at a lonely corner of an otherwise bustling street. The inheritors of this treasure are busy in their everyday-s in different parts of the world and rarely paint the picture of this past in their minds.
One such inheritor, chanced by the home during a morning drive and saw construction materials lying on the inside. She stepped out to try opening the old locks with her deceased father’s set of keys, but the locks had been changed. She asked the locals around and found out the building is in the process of being torn down to build a new structure.
She stopped to decide, whether to care about this or not, then brought it up during dinner with her husband and then upon her son’s persuasion, decided to give us a call- lawyers that she knew and trusted. An internet search was enough to find out that several of the other inheritors had sold their undivided portions to an outsider- a third party- whose identity was murky, even with the details in the registered public domain deed, which itself was marred with purported defects.
Aghast by such information, the family entrusted us to take all necessary steps to stop this demolition and without having to communicate with their deserted family ties, give honour to their share of ownership in the ancestral property.
A preliminary research gave us the legal tools and precedents to understand that even the owner of a majority share in the overall land, cannot construct/demolish any structure or land without the consent of all the co-owners- no matter the meagreness of each co-owner’s undivided share.
With this clear understanding, we proceeded to draw up jurisdiction, an estimate of expenses and a tentative timeline of the initial stages of proceedings, and sought approval from the client. Upon receiving a green signal, the legal processes began, in consultation with Counsels of the Calcutta Bar and a civil suit was initiated before the Original Side of the Hon’ble High Court at Calcutta. After overcoming a few procedural roadblocks, we were able to obtain an ex-parte ad-interim order of injunction restraining the opposite parties from changing the nature and character of the premises by any construction/demolition activities without prior leave of the Hon’ble Court.
Some of opposite parties appeared, and directions for affidavits were given. But the core relief of the client was only addressed through establishing close-to-direct contact with the third party purchaser. This outsider, now the owner of an undivided majority portion of the premises, is obviously interested in purchasing the remainder share to swiftly start reaping the fruits of his investment. Hence, a settlement table is setup and the legal representatives engage in dialogue to arrive at an amenable middle ground where this can be done.
Curiously, the following case scenarios come to mind:
- In case the minority shareholder refuses to sell the share to the majority holder, and also to give consent to any construction activity, can the majority owner still proceed to develop the premises as per his own wishes and in the end give the the minority owner a quantified share out of the development project?
- In a partition suit, which is legal and logical next step in case of disagreement to sell-purchase, can the Court impose a direction to value the share of the minority owner and compel such sale to be made in the interest of the majority owner, against payment of the quantified consideration amount?
- Besides such out-of-court commercial settlement terms, can the Court be dragged into the commercial realities of the losses caused by delay and the practical difficulties in partitioning undivided portions of land in the overall outcome of the project?
Reach out to us if this topic interests you, our team might have the tools for discussion.
